Ethics and The Law: Friend or Foe?

This article discusses the relation between ethical standards for counselors and the legal principles of our society as it affects the client-counselor relationship. The concepts of client confidentiality and counselor liability are defined. A client-counselor situation is outlined, with suggested counselor responses to the ethical/legal issues involved.     

Campbell’s Law and the Ethics of Immensurability

The paper examines “Campbell’s Law”: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” The examination of measurability leads to explaining the reason for existence of a class of unmeasurable phenomena. The author describes a kind of habitus in which a strong taboo against measuring must exist by necessity, not by choice. The taboo is, in effect, a result of degradation of a certain kind of habitus. And finally, the paper demonstrates under which conditions the Campbell’s law is in effect, and how we can mitigate its effects in social decision-making.     

The Ethics and Politics of Religious Ethics, 1973–2023

This essay addresses the questions, “what good is religious ethics for?” and “what justification exists for the field?” in three steps. First, it canvases how religious ethicists have offered reasons for carrying out work in the field to identify an Anti-Reductive Paradigm that is guided by an Egalitarian Imperative. That imperative functions as a thin, minimal morality of inclusivity and equal respect that guides work in the field. Second, the essay considers the field's ends. Here the focus shifts from values that shape the field's methods to values that can describe the field's purposes. That shift requires us to think in terms of a thick rather than a thin morality, one with substantive rather than procedural virtues in mind. The essay offers a constructive, substantive proposal under the rubric of Critical Humanism. Critical Humanism justifies the study of religious ethics as an enterprise that can expand the moral imagination through its encounter with difference. It is shaped by four values: post-critical reasoning, social criticism, cross-cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. Third, the essay brings the two parts of the argument together by explaining how to connect such purposes to the thin morality of inclusivity and equal respect. One upshot of the essay is to have us think not only about values, but also about power as it pertains to scholarship in the guild; hence the attention to the ethics and politics of religious ethics.     

Boundaries and intimacies: Ethics and the (re)performance of “The Law” in psychoanalysis

The notion of a boundary as it pertains to psychoanalysis is explored, and the distinctiveness of psychoanalysis as a healing science that is ethical and amoral is discussed. The difference between such a science and psychotherapies, which are committed to ideological ideals of maturation and adaptation, is elucidated. Five characteristics of psychological boundaries are discussed, and the significance of each individual's “encounter” with the incest taboo is elaborated, in terms of the dynamic formation of the repression barrier. In this context, the strict ethicality and moral neutrality of psychoanalytic practice is understood in terms of the emancipative way in which free-associative discourse works and plays along the repression barrier.     

The Desk or the Bed?

Assertions that studying is done best at a desk rather than on a bed are largely untested. In the present study the GPA of students working at their desks was compared with that of students studying on their beds. There was no difference in the GPA's of the two groups. The assumption that there is a single type of study environment optimal for all students appears unwarranted. Since a sizable number of college students use their beds and even the floor for studying, the use of softer and more comfortable furniture in libraries and study halls deserves consideration.     

Act First and Look Up the Law Afterward?: Medical Malpractice and the Ethics of Defensive Medicine

This essay examines the so-called phenomenon of "defensive medicine" and the problematic aspects of attempting to maintain the safest legal position possible. While physicians face genuine litigation threats they frequently overestimate legal peril. Many defensive practices are benign, but others alter patient care and increase costs in ways that are ethically suspect. Physicians should learn to evaluate realistically the legal risks of their profession and weigh the emotional, physical, and financial costs to the patient before employing a defensive measure.     

The Ethics of Neuroscience and the Neuroscience of Ethics: A Phenomenological–Existential Approach

Advances in the neurosciences have many implications for a collective understanding of what it means to be human, in particular, notions of the self, the concept of volition or agency, questions of individual responsibility, and the phenomenology of consciousness. As the ability to peer directly into the brain is scientifically honed, and conscious states can be correlated with patterns of neural processing, an easy??but premature??leap is to postulate a one-way, brain-based determinism. That leap is problematic, however, and emerging findings in neuroscience can even be seen as compatible with some of the basic tenets of existentialism. Given the compelling authority of modern ??science,?? it is especially important to question how the findings of neuroscience are framed, and how the articulation of research results challenge or change individuals?? perceptions of themselves. Context plays an essential role in the emergence of human identity and in the sculpting of the human brain; for example, even a lack of stimuli (??nothing??) can lead to substantial consequences for brain, behavior, and experience. Conversely, advances in understanding the brain might contribute to more precise definitions of what it means to be human, including definitions of appropriate social and moral behavior. Put another way, the issue is not simply the ethics involved in framing neurotechnology, but also the incorporation of neuroscientific findings into a richer understanding of human ethical (and existential) functioning.     

Does Confucian Ethics Integrate Care Ethics and Justice Ethics? The Case of Mencius

In recent years, scholars of Confucian ethics have debated on important issues such as whether Confucian ethics embraces, or should embrace, universal values and impartiality. Some have argued that Confucian ethics integrates both care and justice, and that Confucian ethics is both particularistic and universalistic. In this essay, I will defend a view of the relation between care and justice and the relation between care ethics and justice ethics on the basis of the notion of ‘configuration of values,’ and show why care ethics and justice ethics cannot be integrated. I will support this view by a reading of some pertinent passages in the Mencius.     

Lévinas,Derrida and the Ethics and Politics of Reproduction

This essay outlines a Lévinas- and Derrida-inspired politics of reproduction, via opening the ethics of reproduction, something previous work on the topic has omitted. It does so via a reassessment of two notable publications on Lévinas and feminism, Stella Sandford’s essay in the Cambridge Companion to Lévinas (2002) and Lisa Guenther’s volume The Gift of the Other: Lévinas and the Politics of Reproduction (2006).¹1 Stella Sandford, ‘Lévinas, Feminism and the Feminine’. I particularly focus on this essay as its negative presentation of Lévinas’ potential for feminism in one of the main introductory texts on his work is an apparently definite dismissal. There is no space to undertake a full analysis of what Sandford has to say in The Metaphysics of Love: Gender and Transcendence in Levinas. There is no doubting her familiarity with Lévinas’ texts, but the way in which she reads them is highly questionable. Her basic assumption is that texts can be treated systematically and she openly rejects Derrida’s suggestion that we can find a number of different “voices” at work in Lévinas. She thus prosecutes a reading which constantly attempts to restrain the radical potential of Lévinas’ text. Indeed, when she cannot find a suitably negative reading she puts words in his mouth by finding supposed parallels with writers such as Bloy, Rav Abbahu or Ebreo, on which basis he is accordingly condemned. The stunning radicality of Lévinas’ conception of subjectivity as fecundity is overlooked. Rather than being a celebration of masculine power, it is the discovery of the powerlessness at the heart of masculinity or any other subjectivity, a dissolution of virility. Sandford wrongly states that fraternity is for Lévinas a simple universality and her treatment of it is underelaborated compared to Howard Caygill’s account of the same term in Lévinas and the Political. Sandford comes very close to recognizing that the fecundity of Totality and Infinity and the maternity of Otherwise than Being are very much two sides of the same coin. Yet again, rather than commend this move, she rejects the way of thinking at work, what I will call “metaphorical thought”, as a debiologizing. The phrase which will be so important for Guenther, “becoming like a maternal body”, is not even mentioned.View all notes Both of these are 10 or more years old years, yet have received little or no extended discussion despite a number of significant problems in their readings of Lévinas. In particular, I challenge Sandford’s insistence on a systematic rather than plurivocal reading of Lévinas on questions of gender and sexual difference. I further stress the importance of a certain thought of metaphor as a way of thinking beyond existing relations. In Guenther’s work I observe a tension between a desire to explore the potential of the metaphoric expression “like a maternal body” and a commitment to phenomenologize the act of giving birth. Arising out of the latter, I note the problematic characterization of maternity as a gift and a very Lévinasian effacement of violence from the maternal relation. The latter tendency, together with an unwillingness to question accepted doxa on the topic, is partly responsible for Guenther’s failure to proceed to the ethics of reproduction which should, in a Lévinas-inspired work, inform and be informed by any politics of reproduction.     

Rate, Probability and Matching: Comments on ��The Identities Hidden in the Matching Laws, and Their Uses�� by David Thorne

David Thorne's (2010) article, “The Identities Hidden In The Matching Laws, And Their Uses” performs a valuable service in pointing out alternative expressions of matching. However, some identities tend to obscure rather than illuminate empirical relationships. Three such problematic instances are discussed: interresponse time as a function of interval and ratio schedule parameters; probability equality as implying rate matching; the apparent simplicity of probabilistic functions, as opposed to response rate functions, of reinforcement rate.     

Ethics,metaphysics, and psychoanalysis∗

An attempt is made to point out some of the moral presuppositions and implications of psychotherapy in theory and in practice. In the various forms of dynamically oriented psychotherapy, the setting of goals and decisions concerning maturation and health have value components. Even in psychoanalysis in its strict sense, decisions made in accepting or rejecting contracts and determination of the terminating point of analysis are value laden.

Finally, in the theorizing of Freud and others about psychotherapy moral positions are assumed.     

Comforting the Parents by Administering Neuromuscular Blockers to the Dying Child: A Conflict Between Ethics and Law?

When the decision has been made to stop treatment of a newborn child with a bad prognosis, the child usually dies in a short time. Sometimes, however, gasping occurs, and although it is usually thought that this is not a sign of suffering, the parents can hardly fail to interpret it as such. Could that be a reason to administer muscle relaxants to the child? It would not harm the child and may greatly benefit the parents. So it seems the humane thing to do. Legally, however, the action would count as killing, and the prohibition of killing normally implies a denial of the authority to decide on exceptions, which should be understood as a protection of public trust. I discuss three ways of arguing why the law, nevertheless, should allow for an exception in this case. The discussion identifies and describes this kind of conflict, and shows how to evaluate proposals for solving it, using a particularly clear exemplary case by way of illustration.     

The ��Problem of Number�� Revisited: The Relative Contributions of Psychosocial, Experiential, and Evolutionary Factors to the Desired Number of Sexual Partners

Three studies (N?=?329) using U.S. community samples examined the relative contributions of self-reported ??sex,?? gender identity, and actual number of sexual partners to the question how many sexual partners individuals desire over the lifetime. In Study 1, the more ??feminine?? a participant identified, not self-reported sex, was significantly related to the desired number of sexual partners. Study 2a showed that a person??s actual number of sexual partners also correlated with the desired number. In Study 3, Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) (Bem Psychological Review, 88: 354?C364 1981) femininity scores and actual number of sexual partners significantly predicted desired number of sexual partners separately for men and women. These results suggest that non-evolutionary variables drive the ??problem of number?? in mate preference.     

The Paradox of Public Service Jefferson, Education, and the Problem of Plato��s Cave

Plato noticed a sizeable problem apropos of establishing his republic??that there was always a ready pool of zealous potential rulers, lying in wait for a suitable opportunity to rule on their own tyrannical terms. He also recognized that those persons best suited to rule, those persons with foursquare and unimpeachable virtue, would be least motivated to govern. Ruling a polis meant that those persons, fully educated and in complete realization that the most complete happiness comprises solitary study of things unchanging, would have to compromise their happiness for the wellbeing of their polis and of the people in it. Plato??s solution, in effect that the aristoi would merely recognize their duty to sacrifice personal happiness for the happiness of the polis, has perplexed and continues today to perplex scholars. Like Plato, Jefferson recognized that there was always a pool of eager sharks, ready to govern. His republicanism, comprising a ward system and general education, was founded on the fullest participation of its citizenry, suitably educated and a governing aristoi. The true aristoi, the ??natural aristoi??, are the intelligent and virtuous and that government is best which allows for a ??pure selection?? of the natural aristoi into the governing offices. Nonetheless, as Jefferson??s own life shows, non-parochial governing meant being rent from domestic tranquility, being forced to leave behind one??s personal affairs to decay, and being tossed willy-nilly into the coliseum of nonstop political wrangling. Why would anyone, particularly one wanting to be happy, wish to govern? Thus, Jefferson faced the same problem that Plato faced. How could a state be structured so that the wisest and most virtuous would be motivated to rule? In this paper, I argue that Jefferson, in full recognition of the problem of encouraging the most intelligent and virtuous to govern, the problem of public service, offers a solution that is remarkably Platonic.     

Nonsense on Stilts? Wittgenstein,Ethics, and the Lives of Animals

Wittgenstein is often invoked in philosophical disputes over the ethical justifiability of our treatment of animals. Many protagonists believe that Wittgenstein's philosophy points to a quantum difference between human and animal nature that arises out of humans' linguistic capacity. For this reason – its alleged anthropocentrism – animal liberationists tend to dismiss Wittgenstein's philosophy, whereas, for the same reason, anti‐liberationists tend to embrace it. I endorse liberationist moral claims, but think that many on both sides of the dispute fail to grasp the import of Wittgenstein's philosophy. My argument proceeds through close engagement with Michael Leahy's Against Liberation, which makes extensive use of Wittgenstein's ‘notion of language‐games’ as an ‘essential methodological aid’ in its defence and justification of the moral status quo. Leahy's understanding and application of that method exemplifies an entrenched interpretative stance in the wider Wittgensteinian scholarship which I seek to counter. This enables me to show that far from entailing conservatism, as some of his critics and followers contend, Wittgenstein's philosophical method is just as conducive to radical moral and political critique as it is to any other normative position.     

The Tri-Council Policy Statement and Research in Cyberspace: Research Ethics, the Internet, and Revising a ‘Living Document’

Increasingly, the Internet is proving to be an important research tool. Today, cyberspace affords researchers easy access to traditionally difficult to reach populations, a host of virtual communities, and a wealth of data created through computer-mediated-communication. This newfound research frontier brings with it, however, a multiplicity of ethical concerns, including: (1) whether the Internet constitutes a private or public space; (2) whether the human subject paradigm is appropriate when considering the ethics of Internet research; and (3) whether cyber participants/‘speakers-as-writers’ and communities should be guaranteed confidentiality and anonymity when researchers contain or consider them in research. This paper examines these specific ethical concerns as they relate to Canada's Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, which, as yet, does not explicitly address ethics involved in Internet research. I propose that in large part the Internet is by definition a public site of activity, and as such, many posters cannot expect their texts to remain confidential, nor their names anonymous, and that the human subject paradigm is highly problematic in terms of regulating ethics involved in some research generated through new information technologies. This is most expressly the case with computer-mediated-communication, which, in light of the Tri-Council Policy Statement, can be viewed as theoretically akin to public entertainment and performance. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.